Wood flooring



Sept. 23, 1941. J, A, poTcHE-N 2,256,836

WOOD FLOORING Filed Feb. 15, 1940 Patented Sept. 23, 1941 WOOD FLOORING Joseph A. Potchen, Grand Rapids, Mich, assignor to Haskelite Manufacturing Corporation, a corporation of New York Application February 15, 1940, Serial No. 318,997

1 Claim.

A common type of flooring in use is one composed of square wooden tiles, usually set on a layer of mastic and joined together by tongues and grooves which serve to prevent relative displacement of adjacent tiles in the vertical direction and to prevent or reduce upflow of the mastic material through the joints. All of the fioorings of this type with which I am familiar are open to some objection or other.

The object of the present invention is to produce a flooring of the general type mentioned above, whether composed of square tiles or other pieces of board, which shall be substantially free from faults of any kind.

Among the faults in old types of such floorings are the tendency of the wood to split in planes more or less parallel to the faces of the tiles, and the seeping of mastic through the joints. Viewed in one of its aspects, the present invention may be said to have for its object to produce a simple and novel form of tile or board which will overcome the specific faults just mentioned.

Also, in the case of thin flooring of the tongue and groove type, the lips left above and below the grooves are usually so thin and frail that those on the top frequently become warped or curl upwardly in use. A further object of the present invention is to overcome this defect.

The various features of novelty whereby my invention is characterized will hereinafter be pointed out with particularity in the claim; but, for a full understanding of my invention and of its objects and advantages, reference may be had to the following detailed description taken in connection with the accompanying drawing, wherein:

Figure 1 is a plan view of four wood tiles adapted to meet at a common corner in the flooring assembly, the tiles being shown separated from each other; Fig. 2 is a plan view, on a larger scale, showing fragments of the said four tiles as they appear when joined together; Fig. 3 is a section on line 3-3 of Fig. 2; and Fig. 4 is a section on line 44 of Fig. 3.

In the drawing I have illustrated my invention as embodied in square wood tiles, but it will of course be understood that the invention is also app icable to joints between pieces that may better be termed boards.

In the arrangement shown, each tile is composed of three layers of wood, I, 2 and 3. Two of the edges of each tile are provided with grooves and the other two with tongues. In accordance with the present invention, I so shape 55 the tongues and grooves that the tongues do not exert a wedging action tending to split the tiles into whose grooves they extend; while, at the same time, provision is made for contact between complementary inclined edge faces between meeting tiles. I also cause the marginal portions of each board at the grooved edges to be gripped, as it were, in jaws formed in the edges of adjacent boards, to prevent upward curling of the upper lips.

Since all of the tiles may be alike, excepting where the grain in the face of each tile is required to be at an angle to the grain in all of the adjacent tiles, in which case the tiles must be made in rights and lefts, only one tile need be described in detail.

From Figure 1 it will be seen that each of the four tiles A, B, C and D has a pair of tongues 4 and 5 projecting from two edges which meet at a comer of the tile; whereas, in the other two edges, are grooves 6 and 'l to receivethe tongues of meeting tiles. The tongues do not lie wholly beyond the body portions of the tiles but are set into wide valleys and, being deeper than the valleys, project far enough outwardly from the latter to permit them to enter deeply into the grooves in adjacent tiles; these valleys forming, in effect, jaws in which the grooved marginal portions of meeting tiles are nested. As best shown in Fig. 3, the valley, indicated at 8, is in the form of a wide, flattened V or a V having an obtuse angle. If the slopes of the sides of the valley were carried clear to the upper and under'faces' of the tile, sharp feather edges, that could easily break and splinter, would result. For this reason, the upper side or slopev of the valley meets a downwardly and outwardlyinclined narrow surface 9 extending downwardly from the upper face of the tile. Therefore, the actual comer along the upper edge of the tile is one that has an obtuse angle. In the same way, the lower side of the valley meets an inclined face ID that may be wider than the face 9 so as to aid in providing between two meeting tiles a bottom recess in the form of a groove into which the mastic may rise.

Each of the two grooved edges of each tile is chamfered from above and below so as to provide what may be termed a nose-like portion II that will fit snugly into the valley of a. meeting tile when the tongue of the latter is seated in the groove in the former. Thus, as clearly shown in Fig. 3, the lip above each groove is held down by the overhanging portion of the adjacent panel, while the part of the latter panel underlying the lower lip holds that panel down: the upper lip being given no opportunity to curl upwardly and mar the surface of the floor. n the under side of the tile the material along the grooved edges may be cut back still farther adjacent to the bottom so as to provide an edge face I2 arranged at the same angle as but oppositely disposed with respect to the edge face I. on the meeting tile. The grooves i are preferably suiiiciently deep to prevent the tongues from bottoming in the same; thereby permitting intimate engagement between the sloping sides of the valleys I and the corresponding faces of the nose portions II. In this way a substantially leak-proof Joint can be produced by pressing meeting tiles into close engagement with each other, without danger of exerting a wedging action that may split the tiles.

By causing the two tongues on each tile to meet in a sharp corner, a very complete interlock is obtained at each corner of a tile with the three other tiles which it meets there. This condition is well illustrated in Fig. 4 in which the upper layer of veneer I has been omitted so as to show the tongues 4 and 5 in full lines. It will be seen that the corner formed by the juncture of the two tongues on the tile D extends into the grooves of the other three tiles A, B and C. In other words, there is no interior opening or cavity in the vicinity of the meeting point of four tiles, except that occasioned by the desire for clearance in the tongue and groove joints to permit free engagement of the inclined faces between the nose portions and valley portions of the meeting tiles.

The tongues and grooves may conveniently be produced by simply displacing the central or core layers 2 from the other layers in two directions, thereby causing the central or core layer to pro- Ject from two edges of the remaining layers and thus form tongues; whereas, through the retraction inwardly of the other two edges of the central core or layer, the grooves are produced. In this way the tongues and grooves, proper, are formed without requiring any cutting operation except that of cutting the core layers initially to the proper size.

While I have illustrated and described with particularity only a single preferred form of my invention, I do not desire to be limited to the exact structural details thus illustrated and described; but intend to cover all forms and arrangements which come within the definitions of my invention constituting the appended claim.

I claim:

A rectangular floor board or tile having in each of two edges meeting in a corner a valley in the form of a wide V of obtuse angle extending throughout the length of the corresponding edge and having the marginal portions of the other two edges in the form of V-shaped noses adapted to fit into valleys like the aforesaid valleys, a tongue much thinner than the board or tile rising from the bottom of each valley and protruding therefrom, each nose having therein a groove to receive one of the tongues on an adjacent board or tile, the lips along the edges of the valleys being cut back to produce inclined faces which slope in the opposite directions from the corresponding sides of the valleys, the inclined faces on the upper lips being quite narrow and parallel to the lower sides of the corresponding valleys while the inclined faces on the under side of the board or panel are wider than those at the top and lie more nearly parallel to the plane of the board or tile than do the inclined faces on the upper side, and the tile being cut away on the under side at the juncture of each nose therewith to produce inclined faces similar to the said inclined faces on the lower lips.

JOSEPH A. PO'ICEELN. 

